


Not-Numb (NC17)

by thatceliachick



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: F/M, S&M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-20
Updated: 2014-09-20
Packaged: 2018-02-18 01:38:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2330462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatceliachick/pseuds/thatceliachick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prentiss finds a way to cope with the day-to-day horrors of working for the BAU. WARNING: GRAPHIC D/S CONTENT AND CASE-RELATED VIOLENCE.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not-Numb (NC17)

Emily Prentiss watches in silence as the crime scene techs go about their grim business: Eight bodies so far, all presumably boys between the ages of six and ten.

It is July, and the air shimmers with heat and humidity, but Prentiss’s hands and feet are like ice. She stands with her hands in her pockets, flexing her fingers to ease the numbness.

The man taking credit for their deaths stands a few feet away. His wrists and ankles are shackled and he is surrounded by New Hampshire state troopers who, from their expressions, would be just as happy to shoot him once he tells them where the rest of the bodies are as to turn him over to the courts system.

“There’s five or six more on the other side of those trees,” the prisoner says. He is Raymond Lee Jarnusch, a 41-year-old divorced white male who works as a housepainter and handyman. His face is as soft and forgettable as a bowl of plain oatmeal, and he has the slightest lisp. “Between the fence and the creek bed.”

“How many did you leave in Vermont?” Aaron Hotchner asks. His tone, as always, is even, displaying only a businesslike interest. But Prentiss remembers when his eyes weren’t so hooded, when the lines around his mouth weren’t etched so deeply.

When Hayley was alive.

She remembers telling him that she compartmentalized better most people, but that was a long time ago. Before she was frozen.

“Only four,” Jarnusch says. “It’s a small state.” And he chuckles at his own joke until one of the troopers elbows him in the kidneys, sending him to his knees.

Just then, the first coroner’s van arrives. Prentiss looks away, not wanting to see the pitifully small body bags the crew unloads from the back of the van.

One of the cadaver dogs starts barking near the stand of trees Jarnusch just pointed out, and Hotchner turns to see what they’ve found. Prentiss breathes in, breathes out, in, out, in, out. She is so cold that she half expects to see her breath forming little clouds, even though she can feel sweat dribbling down her back.

She stamps her numb feet twice, then hurries after Hotchner.

*****  
She is not this person, Prentiss reminds herself as she bends over the upholstered whipping bench.

Or maybe she is; she’s played so many roles over the years that she can’t really keep them straight anymore. But she doesn’t resist as the two hooded men cuff her wrists, then her ankles, in place. The bench is slanted, designed to offer up her ass for punishment or pleasure.

She is in the back room of a bar in South Philadelphia, close enough to D.C. that she can get there easily for a weekend escape, but far enough away that she’s unlikely to run into anyone she knows.

One of the hooded men claps twice to get the crowd’s attention. Prentiss’s face grows warm as he slaps her ass. She shudders with excitement and humiliation as the dozen or so men and women watching ripple with laughter and draw closer to the bench.

“On your tiptoes,” he orders. “Now count!”

The first fiery stroke sends a welcome rush of heat through her body. Hips swinging, she yelps, “One!”

*****  
So far, the UNSUB has only set off one bomb.

But authorities have been warned to expect more. The first explosion, which flattened an IRS processing office, killed seven, including three first responders.

The latest letter informs them that that the key to next location “is right in front of you,” and gives the time – 2:45 p.m. September 19 – “Today?” one of the local cops says. “Shit!”

It is 1 p.m., and they’re all staring at the letter and the envelope it had come in, delivered by messenger an hour earlier.

“The postmark,” Hotch says. “Where was it stamped?”

They just manage to get the post office evacuated while they wait for the Tacoma bomb squad. But the techs are just entering the building when the bomb goes off. The first explosion knocks Prentiss off her feet. Hotch shields her from the second, keeping her pinned until most of the smoke clears.

Her hands are bleeding, she realizes when he pulls her to her feet, but she’s not sure why.

She just stares at her bloody palms, not noticing as he gently guides her to the paramedics.

*****  
She’s forgotten how much James Vickers likes the hardware. The leather collar is pulled snug around her throat and James has fastened a belled clamp to each nipple. A leather harness fastened around her waist holds the vibrators he’s inserted into her pussy and her ass in place, and he’s holding the remote control for them as he works the room.

Prentiss stands on her tiptoes in the middle of the dining room with her gloved arms cuffed overhead; a spreader bar cuffed to her ankles keeps her legs spread. The leather hood she wears is hot, but she appreciates the anonymity it affords her in the crowded Alexandria townhouse.

She can’t quite keep her balance, which is the point. The little bells dangling from her nipples jingle softly as she keeps shifting from foot to foot, their music drawing the guests’ attention to her movements. She shivers a little with the realization that the tune will reach a faster tempo soon enough.

The wall she faces is mirrored, and the ball gag muffles her gasp of surprise as she recognizes Hotchner among the guests moving in and out of the room. 

He can’t possible recognize her, Prentiss reminds herself, but she can’t keep from scanning the room to try to keep track of him.

Then James is back, guiding a middle-aged couple over to her.

He’s holding his favorite riding crop in one hand and the remote control in the other.

Prentiss hears a soft click, and the vibrator in her pussy begins to buzz gently inside her. A second click and the second vibrator thrums to life.

Too much, she thinks, fighting to breathe as her hips begin rocking involuntarily in response to the double stimulation. She can’t hold still, can’t catch her breath, can’t quiet the little bells’ music as she begins swaying.

He sets the remote down and begins lightly, rhythmically striping her backside with the crop. By the fifth stroke, she’s coming, grateful for the gag that prevents her from howling as she writhes with pleasure and pain.

Hotch is the third guest to take the crop. Watching him watch her squirming backside as he takes aim, Prentiss surrenders to another orgasm before he lands the first stroke.

*****  
The first body – the body they thought was the first, Prentiss corrects herself – is really the fifth.

Spencer Reid is explaining how the error happened – a messy tangle of crossed jurisdictional lines, cops who don’t play well together and an overarching apathy toward dead drug dealers – but the simple fact is that someone is crucifying young black men and setting them on fire and the BAU is late to a party no one realized was in progress in Newark, New Jersey.

Prentiss only half-listens as Reid works his map voodoo, showing with lines and circles and even string where the victims all overlap with each other and, presumably, their killer.

Mostly, though, she wonders if Hotch ever thinks about that night in the basement in Alexandria. He’s given no indication that he ever recognized her, and she’s lost hours of sleep reminding herself that he couldn’t have known.

When he pairs off with Reid to start looking for suspects, she sends up a silent prayer of thanks.

Two days later, she and Derek Morgan are masking up to enter the scene where the sixth victim has been discovered.

It is November, but Prentiss barely notices the dull winter chill as they enter the abandoned factory. Through the awful stench of burned flesh, she realizes they’ve caught something of a break. Their victim is dead, but the body is only partially burned. What’s left of the poor bastard might reveal some clue to the UNSUB’s identity.

“Why isn’t this one burned as badly as the others?” Morgan asks the fire marshal.

The marshal points to the ceiling, and Prentiss seeks patches of sky and rusted metal. “It rained.”

“A few degrees colder and it would be snow,” Morgan says.

He notices Prentiss rubbing her hands. “Do we need to stop and get you some mittens?” he teases.

“They won’t help,” she says, and ignores the question in his eyes.

*****  
The palms of her hands and her knees are stained green as she kneels, naked and panting, in the cool, damp grass at Sebastian’s feet. She knows Sebastian isn’t his real name, but it’s a trivial detail. The game is all that matters, and today, the game is fetch.

Sebastian ruffles her hair affectionately, and turns her collar so that the heart-shaped tag is properly positioned. He holds a tennis ball in one hand as the other strokes and tweaks her throbbing clit until she has to bite her lip to keep from moaning with frustration.

He’s promised to let her come as soon as they finish the game, but it’s been nearly an hour and Prentiss is almost desperate for release.

It’s a beautiful April Sunday, and soon this part of the Baltimore park they’re playing in will be filling up with joggers. But Sebastian doesn’t seem to care.

He gives her clit a final stroke, leaving her gasping. “Good doggie,” he says. “Get the ball!”

Prentiss is almost grateful for the ache between her legs, for the stinging scratches on her arms and legs as she hurries after the ball into the weeds. They remind her she is not-numb.

*****  
Three dead teenage girls, two missing.

No, Prentiss reminds herself, not dead: Butchered, like cattle, after repeated sexual assaults. Each had been found strung upside down, throat slashed.

And the man they’re questioning has been hinting to all of El Paso PD that he’s responsible. His van was spotted near the site where the last body was found, and forensics techs found blood on a tarp in the back of the vehicle. They’re waiting for DNA tests, but he has alibis for the times the first three girls were taken. And in the meantime, he’s taunting them from the interrogation room, letting them know that only he can save the two remaining girls.

Prentiss is almost certain he’s lying, at least in part, but they only have about 18 hours before the next body turns up, and they need something solid before they can either act on his information or turn the narcissistic little prick loose.

The local cops are ready to just beat the truth out of him, and Prentiss is almost tempted to let them. Michael Patrick Flynn makes her skin crawl, and that alone makes him worthy of a beat-down.

He smirks at Hotchner, who looks at him like he’s a particularly ugly insect about to be pinned to a display mat.

A knock on the door makes everyone jump a little. One of the local cops opens the door and motions them out into the hall.

“We’ve got DNA results. The blood is a match for Tara Duggan.”

The first girl found, Prentiss thought. She’d been 15, an average student who played clarinet in her high school marching band.

Tara’s blood, in Flynn’s van. It’s enough for an arrest, but….

“He couldn’t have kidnapped them,” Prentiss tells Hotchner. “The timing’s all wrong.”

“He’s got a helper,” Hotchner says. “We’ve got to figure out who, and where Emma and Katie are.”

“What do we do?” the El Paso detective asks.

“Arrest him. Let him know about the blood evidence and hint that forensics found more in the van. Let him stew. We need to know more about him,” Hotchner says.

Prentiss calls Penelope Garcia. “We need everything you can find on this guy,” she tells Garcia. “Yesterday, if possible. Who’s his partner? And can we pin down his whereabouts for the times the girls were taken, the periods they were missing and the times the bodies were found?”

“At once, my queen,” Garcia replies.

She works her magic, and a few hours later, Flynn is back in the box.

Hotchner is holding three pieces of paper. “Your foster brother, Gary Wisniewski. Released six months ago for kidnapping and armed robbery,” he says, setting the first piece of paper on the table in front of Flynn. “Thrown out of two foster homes for inappropriate behavior with teenage girls under the same roof.”

He slaps down the second paper. “Wisniewski’s financial transactions and cell phone calls and texts for the times of the kidnappings of all five girls. He was in the vicinity for all of them, and the two of you were burning up the line.”

He lets the last page float to the table. “The lease you two signed for a storage locker north of the city. Sheriffs just spotted Wisniewski’s truck in the parking lot. We’re on our way. You need to decide now whether you want to end up on Death Row with him. Detectives Morales and Bittner will take your statement.”

“Gary picked them,” Flynn says. He looks up at Prentiss, making sure to make eye contact. “You’re more my type. But I did them anyway.”

Before she can stop herself, she backhands him, knocking him out of the chair. Her hand throbs as she and Hotchner head to the SUV.

“How’s the hand?” he asks as they race toward the freeway.

They’re in a caravan of lights and sirens. She checks the mirror and sees Rossi and Reid in the SUV just behind them. Morgan is leading the parade, of course, and there are half a dozen local and state units in between.

“Not bad, but I should probably put some ice on it,” she says, flexing her fingers a little. Then she laughs a little, mostly at herself. She is not-numb, and Flynn got his beat-down after all.

“Nice shot, by the way.” He is not quite smiling, and she realizes it’s her favorite expression. She hasn’t seen it in a long time.

“I wanted to actually shoot him,” Prentiss confesses. “With a gun.”

“You may get your chance with Wisniewski, if local SWAT doesn’t beat us to it,” Hotchner says. “This is Texas, after all.”

“You are such a tease,” she shoots back, realizing how inappropriate her response is only after the words are out of her mouth. And incorrect; she had come twice for him that night in the basement.

He just grins at her and even in Texas in July, she is warm for the first time in months.

*****  
Hotch insists on driving her home from the airport.

It’s a chilly night, the first that really indicates that fall is settling in, even though it’s almost November. They’ve just returned from Idaho and a string of arsons that left six people dead, including the UNSUB, who chose suicide by cop over due process. 

Prentiss checks her e-mail on her personal cell phone as Hotch navigates traffic. Sebastian wants another play date. She remembers the wet grass under her knees, his fingers working between her legs, offering and, ultimately, denying pleasure, and deletes the e-mail without reading beyond the subject line.

Hotchner looks ready to drop from exhaustion, she thinks. He’s lost weight, and the dark circles under his eyes seem to have become permanent. She’s still a little surprised that he was the one wielding the crop; she would have thought he’d prefer to be on the receiving end.

She’s feeling a little disoriented after the day’s events, and knows she should just keep her mouth shut.

But she just can’t.

“How long have you known James Vickers?” she asks, and wants to laugh at his startled expression. Gotcha, she thinks, almost gleeful. “I met him in London when I was with the State Department. We got back in touch when he moved to DC a couple years ago. You can’t tell now, but the townhouse was a wreck when he bought it. The plaster in the dining room came off along with the three layers of wallpaper he was removing, he had to replace all of the wiring and most of the plumbing just to get it up to code, and the foundation was cracked. And the basement leaks sometimes, but he’s getting that fixed, he says. I think that mirrored wall in the dining room is kind of tacky myself, but I suppose it serves its purpose.”

His expression is even more guarded than usual. “I don’t remember seeing you there,” he says.

“Oh, but you did,” she replies, not quite smiling, and watches him do the math.

He is silent for several seconds, and really, Prentiss thinks, what can he say?

“You need to take the next right,” she tells him, letting him off the hook a little.

Then they’re in front of her building. He puts the car in “park” and just looks at her, studying her for several seconds, and for that brief moment, she knows, neither of them is playing a part.  
She writes down her private e-mail address, the one Sebastian and James use, on the back of one of her business cards and hands it to him. “Good night, Hotch. Thanks for the ride.”

Not-numb, she reminds herself, and remembers it again when his message appears in her inbox two days later.


End file.
